Posts Tagged ‘Boom Boom Pow’

Hello everyone, and Merry Christmas! I have compiled (and it was startlingly easy) my top 20 albums of 2009 (if you know me, you know it’ll be an R&B female-dominated affair as usual!). Unlike last year, when I listed 10 and did mini reviews, this time I’ve got 20 (since my shortlist came to 20 albums, I thought it would just be easier to rank 11-20, than pick out some for Honourable Mentions). No mini-reviews, or I would be here forever, and I think my blog posts are long enough without breaking the 5000 word barrier! So I’ve just put the best and worst tracks from each album with the album cover, and hopefully you’ll be intrigued to download my favourite songs of 2009. And while you’re at it, you can download my own album, Quiet Storm, here too! So without further ado…

Okay, this is the final part of the stories behind the tracks on my album Quiet Storm. Parts 1, 2 and 3 can be viewed if you click on those little numbers, and I want to thank everyone once and again for supporting my album and my blog. I really appreciate it, and I hope that these behind-the-music notes have added a little to your enjoyment of my music. On with the show!

18. Role Model (Interlude)

This was originally an entire song which was a rap song with a sung chorus. You can hear the original full version on my High Fashion mixtape but although the lyrics were kinda cool, I wasn’t too keen on my flow in places and I thought that I would rather not have the raps as part of my album. Nevertheless, I appreciated the idea of the chorus and feeling misrepresented in society as a young person, a gay man, a singer, my music tastes, where I come from, my heritage… all those things are categorised and yet how many of us actually fit the stereotypes for those categories? I felt that it led into the next song well, as it is about exposing who I am as a person, and not letting anyone’s pigeon holes or preconceived notions dictate who I am. This is me, and this is…

19. The Truth

This song is probably the most heartfelt I’ve been in any of my songs recorded to date. It discusses my relationship with my family, life and death, my emotional state and insecurities, my childhood, my education, and music. It is the truth of who I am – sometimes we feel sad or hard done by, and other times we remember how happy we have been and whatever happens, we just have to keep going and get on with it anyway. This song is a bit scratchy due to the fact that I have recorded myself playing acoustic guitar on the track (yes, that is me!) and it didn’t work perfectly, though I think it did the job. I liked the guitar and the piano and the beat – it combined together well to be a midtempo R&B joint that was musically quite stable and almost sunny, yet anchored in place by some really heavy lyrics. I thought it would originally have been the album closer, but then you’ll see I changed my mind about that.

20. Last Chance

I wanted the last song proper on the album to be a dance song – something that really went out with a bang! I decided this because sometimes (in keeping with the nocturnal theme of the album) you’re not ready to go home at the end of a night, until the DJ has played one final song that really gets you to annihilate the dancefloor and you can just let yourself go with the music before calling it a wrap. This song is that song – I was inspired by “Work” by Ciara (sampled on the track!), “Get Me Bodied” by Beyoncé, “Boom Boom Pow” by the Black Eyed Peas and just any song that really makes me want to move. Other songs sampled in this are Paulina Rubio’s “Sexi Dance” (at the very end when the track fades out) which gives the song a late-night / early morning sensuous hue, and Beethoven’s “Für Elise” – just because it worked! I was crafting this track for a really long time, and between utilising the beat at the end of “All Night Long” to give the album a sense of circularity and closure, and trying to really fire up the beats and make them incendiary, I just tried to be as crazy as possible. The rap, the off-kilter song structure with multiple hooks and instrumental at the beginning, the extended coda – it’s really going for broke! And that was what I wanted for the last song.

21. Close

To once again fit with the theme of closure and circularity, this is the “outro” of the album, to pair with the “Open” intro – again, I wanted to use the word “Close” in two different ways, both signifying the end of the album and also bringing in the idea of just wanting someone to hold you close, and desiring that intimacy (not necessarily sexually) at the end of the night, just before the sun rises and you’re feeling contemplative.

22. Lucky To Have You (Bonus Track)

My grandfather passed away during the creation of this album, and I remember being at Oxford and hearing on the telephone from my mother and grandmother that his health was really deteriorating. I wrote this song to comfort him (though he never heard it, and neither has anyone else in my family) as he passed away – I wasn’t allowed to go home and see him because it was in the middle of my finals, and he died and the funeral was held all while I was stuck in Oxford and expressly forbidden to come home. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forget that – feeling so helpless far away and yet just glad his suffering was over (his illness was long and protracted). This song is really personal and dedicated to him; it doesn’t fit with the rest of the album, but I nevertheless wanted to include it somewhere so I thought a bonus track was the best opportunity.

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That’s it! Once again, please download my album if you haven’t already, and check out my blog! Thanks for all the support – I really appreciate it and I’ll keep the posts coming! 🙂

Ok, the blog entry I was planning to write has been put on hold because today the Sugababes’ new single premiered on radio. It’s called “Get Sexy” and it is very good. It is the best thing they have released since Amelle joined the group, because it brings back the Sugababes sound of urban club pop as present on their previous songs “Freak Like Me”, “Blue”, “Whatever Makes You Happy”, “Gotta Be You” and “Future Shokk!”. So to the people who are saying the Sugababes have sold out and are simply copying “Boom Boom Pow”, you are very 2000 and late because the Sugababes were doing this kind of music much prior to releasing Avril-lite pop such as “About You Now” (although the piano-led ballad version on Catfights and Spotlights went a long way to redeeming that song for me).

When Mutya left the group, I was very curious to see how the Sugababes would continue since, up to that point it had seemed like Mutya was the main creative energy in the group, and her attitude and swagger modified Keisha’s pop sensibilities into something much more angular. Replaced by Amelle, it would seem that I had been correct – her voice just didn’t have that Sugababes blend (whereas when Heidi replaced Siobhan, her voice was a stellar compliment to the group – if you don’t believe me, go and listen to “Breathe Easy (Acoustic Jam)” and any live version of “Stronger”) and seemed harsh and grating. Out went the streetwise edge, in came the high pop polish that remained for the Change album; IMO, the group’s creative nadir. By Catfights and Spotlights, Amelle’s voice seemed to complement the others’ more and the mix of brass-led pop and R&B tracks such as “Side Chick” and “Can We Call A Truce” evoked 60s Motown as interpreted by Shola Ama. An improvement, but still not enough for me to consider the Sugababes back in my good books. Meanwhile, Mutya Buena dropped a fantastic solo album which underperformed and she was promptly dropped from her label. As ever, my taste and that of the British public are very divergent.

So “Get Sexy” is not a particularly deep song; “My Love Is Pink” was hardly a lyrical revelation. But “Get Sexy” is a song that embodies fun, attitude and club-ready flirting, and it is a song that you can act sexy to. It has multiple hooks (one of which riffs of that classic Right Said Fred song), and Heidi’s voice in the second verse is the sexiest part of the whole thing. I doubt very much that the Sugababes aimed to ape the Black Eyed Peas, but I don’t care if they did, because it’s better than choosing to ape Girls Aloud or the Saturdays, which is apparently what people expected. And if the Sugababes are still defying expectations and releasing fantastic music such as this, then I might just begin following them again with renewed interest.

Oh, after all that, you might want to listen to the song. Here you are – enjoy! 😀